FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to a cleaning device for cylinders of printing presses, having at least one wash roller engageable with and disengageable from the cylinders, the wash roller being formed as a brush roller and being sprayable with cleaning fluid.
A heretofore known device of this general type (published German Patent Document DE 43 43 692 A1) uses a brush roller which is disposed in a housing. Cleaning fluid or water may be applied to the bristles of the brush roll via nozzles. In order to clean the cylinder outer surface, the brush roll is pivoted toward the outer surface and set rotating. The feeding of cleaning agent takes place at the same time, so that cleaning agent is applied to the outer surface of the cylinder to be cleaned, and loosens dirt and ink residues thereat. The bristles of the brush roll take up the loosened dirt particles and, downline of a doctor device, throw off the particles into the housing, from which they are then able to run off. It has been shown that, at relatively high speed, the straight bristles of the conventional brush rolls very quickly spray off the cleaning fluid applied and, due to the open surface, have a very low storage capacity for the cleaning fluid. Consequently, only a small fraction of the cleaning fluid which is applied reaches the outer surface to be cleaned. At the same time, the straight bristles are not well suited to take off dirt particles, because of the low adhesive capacity thereof. The result of these disadvantages is that there is a relatively high requirement for cleaning agent, and that the time for cleaning of the outer surface is relatively long.
Starting from this state of the prior art, it is an object of the invention of the instant application, to provide a cleaning device for cylinders of printing presses by the use of which the requirement for cleaning fluid and the time needed for the cleaning are reduced. In this regard, it is assumed that the cleaning result meets the requirements, i.e., an equally good cleaning result on the outer casing surface of the cylinder is achieved.